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Years ago, before I had a real website or knew what I was doing with pricing, I ran a little workshop out of my studio. Just a few hours, materials included, you go home with a small piece. I charged €35 because I was scared to ask for more and it covered the tile and the wine. A tourist from Australia came, loved it, posted about it. Next thing I know it's on some blog. Fine. But then her friend emails me asking if I can do a private session for four people at the same price. I said yes because I'm an idiot who hadn't learned to say "that was a group rate." Now eight years later I sometimes still get people who found that old blog post and expect the €35 price. I've raised it to €65 and they look at me like I'm trying to sell them a car. I should have changed the name of the workshop or something. Instead I just have to be the bad guy every time someone shows up with a screenshot from 2016.

I’m working on a new series of screenprints, trying to achieve really precise layering for subtle color shifts. The problem is registration, especially when I want a transparent ink to sit perfectly over another. I'm using a vacuum frame and my usual registration pins, but the slight give in the mesh, even on fine counts like 180, seems to be causing tiny shifts between layers. It's most noticeable when I have light colors over darker ones, where any misalignment breaks the illusion of depth. Has anyone found a clever workaround for this, beyond just meticulous alignment? Maybe a different type of registration system or a way to better tension the fabric on the frame itself?

cleaned my entire workspace yesterday. spent like 2 hours reorganizing, threw out old dried up paint tubes, wiped down the palette, the whole thing. looked at it and felt very adult and put together. woke up this morning and it already looks like a bomb went off. there's a rogue paint lid stuck to my forearm and i don't remember when that happened. i think the desk just reproduces chaos overnight when i'm not looking. it's personal at this point. anyway the painting i'm working on is going fine but the space around it is actively hostile. who else's studio is just a controlled disaster that you've given up on pretending to tame

Years ago when I came back to painting after my fallow stretch, I was desperate for income. A local gallery let me run a figure painting workshop out of their back room and I priced it at 45 euros a session because I was terrified nobody would come. They filled up. Fine. But that number got stuck to me like a burr. Every student since tells the next one what I charge, and whenever I've tried to bump it to something that reflects what I actually do, I meet resistance. 45 became my identity. Last month I finally did the honest math for a 6-week course, six students. Materials with good pigment, the room rental, my prep time sketching demos, the corrections between sessions. I took home under 9 euros an hour. That's less than the woman who cleans my studio building. I know the fix. I raise it, I let the ones who complain leave, I stop pricing from fear. But there's a specific ugliness when the low price is the thing that made you feel wanted back when you felt worthless. Hard to put down. Anyone else have a number that got emotionally welded to them?

I had a gallery once that took my collages and then asked if I could "add more colour" to fit the rest of the show. I said no, and that was that. But it stuck with me, how much are you willing to adjust your work for a space? Has a gallery ever asked you to change what you make to suit them? And did you do it, or walk?

the first gallery that gave me a real conversation told me my work was "interesting but not commercial" and i didn't know if that was a compliment or a warning. turned out it was both lol. still think about it years later. what's the most memorable thing, good or bad, a gallerist has said to you that stuck? the kind of line you still replay in your head

I've been selling small etchings for €180 since 2021. Same size, same paper, same amount of work. Three years of the same number while my studio rent in Berlin went up twice and the price of copper plates nearly doubled. Last month I finally raised them to €240. Not a huge jump. Still probably too low for the time that goes in. But I did it. Then a former professor, someone whose opinion I actually respect, saw the new price list and said, in that careful tone, that the pricing was "ambitious." Asked if I was worried about "pricing myself out" of the market. The market being what, exactly? The market of people who think art should cost as much as a nice dinner? I didn't say what I wanted to say, which is that I know etchers in London charging £400 for a similar plate and nobody calls that ambitious. I just said I'd think about it. Now I'm sitting here wondering if I should have raised them more, or if I'm actually wrong. The math says €240 is still a bad hourly rate when you add up drawing time, plate prep, printing, editioning. But the voice of that professor is stuck in my head.

There's a Saturday market in Galway I've been doing on and off for maybe twelve years. Rain, hail, the odd glorious day where everyone's in great form. And I used to think the point of it was to shift prints, which it is, but the real thing it taught me is how to talk to people about what you make without sounding like you're selling. You get all sorts at a stall. The tourist who wants something that says Ireland without being a leprechaun on a toilet. The local who stops because they recognise the pier or the mountain. The person who clearly loves the work but hasn't got thirty quid and stands there turning a card over in their hands. And you learn, quick, that the ones who buy aren't the ones you try to convince. They're the ones you just talk to, normally, about the carving or the ink or the hare that lives in the field behind your house and won't let you get near it. The thing that stuck with me is this: I've never sold a print by telling someone how good it is. I've sold plenty by telling them the story of the night I carved it and nearly took the tip of my finger off, or how the block got dropped in a puddle and the crack became part of the print. People want the thing behind the thing. They don't want a pitch. Anyway. The market's grand for that. But online, I still catch myself trying to sound like a proper business instead of just a fella in a jumper with ink under his nails. And the minute I do that, engagement drops off a cliff. The posts that work are always the ones where I forget I'm supposed to be marketing and just talk about what happened today. Sure I don't know where I'm going with this except that the best marketing advice I ever got was from a woman buying a print of a heron who said "just tell me why you made it" and walked away with two.

so i did the math months later and that's like $18/hr before materials. and she was the one who suggested the price, i just nodded. i knew it was low but i didn't wanna be the guy who haggles with a friend. now every time i look at that painting i just see $18/hour staring back at me. i don't even know what i'd have said if i had to name it. 500? 800? feels fake to ask for that. but 200 also feels fake for 11 hours. so i'm stuck in the middle where both numbers feel wrong and i just don't talk about money with anyone i know personally anymore lol

okay so I finally landed my first gallery showing last year and the whole process was honestly such a mess I'm still not sure I did it right. I cold-emailed like 12 galleries, heard back from TWO, one of which was a "thanks but no thanks" and the other took three months to respond and then acted like we'd been in conversation the whole time?? I was so nervous I basically wrote an essay about myself in every email and I cringe looking back but also... it worked?? eventually?? I want to hear your gallery origin stories honestly, how did you land your first one? Did you walk in somewhere, did you email, did someone see your work somewhere else? Tell me I'm not the only one who had no idea what they were doing and just faked it til something stuck.

I went to this gallery in a different city last year, showed them my portfolio, old Bangalore houses, chai stalls, morning light in a certain neighbourhood. And the gallerist looks at me and goes, "This is lovely, but can you make it look more Indian?" I didn't even know what to say. I paint what I see every day. What does "more Indian" even mean? She wanted bright Bollywood colours and lotuses or something, I think. Anyway I didn't take it further obviously. But it stuck with me, that assumption that your work needs to perform some idea of where you're from, rather than just being honest about what you actually see and paint. Anyone else ever been asked to "look more" like something? Or the opposite, told you're too X and should tone it down? What's the weirdest feedback a gallerist has given you about your identity or subject matter?

I've been painting seriously again for about six years now, and I still keep ending up with the same brand of paint I started with. I've tried the fancy ones at workshops, bought a couple tubes of stuff that cost $12 each, and I always go back to the $4 tubes from Michaels. Maybe it's just what I learned on and I'm used to the consistency. Or maybe I'm telling myself it doesn't matter to justify being cheap, ha. But honestly I got a tube of something nice at a workshop last spring and it dried out weird and I was annoyed. So I'm back to my usual. Anyone else stuck on a brand they probably should have outgrown by now?

had a gallery once tell me my work was too "unsettling" for their clients and could I maybe soften it up a bit. i said no obviously but it stuck with me, how much would you change your work to get in the door? is there a line or is it all just business?

Back when I was still doing fabrication for other artists, I used to buy a lot of limestone from this old guy out in Indiana. Third generation quarry family. Tough customer. You showed up late, he'd make you wait. You talked too much, he'd just walk away mid-sentence. One day I'm complaining about a commission that fell through. Client loved the maquette, then ghosted. I'd put three weeks into it. He's loading stone onto my truck and he doesn't even look up. Says "Did you ask for money before you started?" No. Of course not. I was young and wanted the work. He says "Then you didn't have a client. You had a hope." That stuck with me. For years I operated like making the thing was the hard part and selling it would just happen if the work was good enough. That's not how it works. The stone dealer knew that. The gallerists I've dealt with know it too, they just don't say it out loud because the silence benefits them. I'm not saying be a salesman. I'm saying the transaction is part of the arrangement, not an afterthought. If you can't talk about money with someone before you make them anything, you don't have a deal yet.

I had this tall wonky vessel, hand built, took me like three weeks. There was a face kind of hiding in the glaze, you'd catch it from the side, half there. Not painted on, just the way the oxides pooled and ran. It was the best thing I'd ever made honestly. My grandmother saw a photo and said it was smiling at her. Then I decided it needed one more layer of something. A clear coat, to protect it. And the face just... died. Buried under the gloss. Now it's this perfectly fine vessel with nothing in it. I keep putting it in different light trying to find it again and it's not coming back. I know you don't get to undo a firing. But I'm stuck on whether I keep it as is, or smash it and use the shards for something. There's a lesson here about when to leave things alone and I keep not learning it. Has anyone else killed their own work by "finishing" it?

Ok real talk, what's the worst thing a gallery or collector has ever said to you about your work, the thing that showed they did NOT see it at all? Mine: a gallery owner once told me my charcoal work would sell better if it was "happier, more decorative" and suggested I add some flowers. Flowers. To my figures. I almost laughed in her face and then I almost cried. I still think about it when I'm putting a piece up somewhere. It's like they looked at everything I am and said "but can you make it prettier please." What's the one that stuck with you?? The one you still bring up at dinner 😭

Painted a still life tonight at the kitchen table after the kids went down. Same table we ate spaghetti at two hours earlier. I wiped it down, laid out the drop cloth, and there's still a smear of tomato sauce on the corner of my reference photo that I just decided to live with. I used to feel bad about not having a real studio space. Read all these posts about people's dedicated rooms with north light and proper easels and I'd get all wistful. But honestly the kitchen table works. The light is awful. The cat walks across my palette at least twice a session. My 8 year old stuck a drawing of a dinosaur to the easel I can't even use because there's no room for it. But it's the only uninterrupted hour I get and I'll take it. Finished a decent little pear study tonight, better than my last one. That's the whole win. Packed it up and now I'm eating leftover spaghetti over the sink like a civilized person. Who else is painting on a dining room table or a folding tray or wherever they can grab space?

Took a cardboard box of torn paper out to the curb this morning, old failed washes I finally gave up on. Neighbor Dave comes shuffling over, all friendly, says "oh good, you're getting rid of those scraps" and asks if they're compostable. They weren't scraps. They were a week of work I'd already mourned and buried. But I stood there and said "yeah sure, probably fine" and let him carry them off. I don't even know why that's stuck in my craw. He wasn't wrong. They were going in the trash either way. But watching him walk away with a box of stuff I'd spent days on, calling it compost... felt like someone grinding out a cigarette on a photo of your dead dog. which is dramatic but you know the feeling. Anyway I'm not speaking to him for a while. He won't notice. that's the part that gets me.

Every winter I forget. I complain about the grey, I paint by lamplight, I tell myself the north light that I chose on purpose was a mistake. And then one morning in early March the sun comes in low and sideways through that same window and hits the wall behind my easel the colour of warm milk, and I remember why I chose this room. There is no decision involved. I just stand there with my coffee and watch it move across the plaster for fifteen minutes. The whole painting I thought was stuck last week looks different. Not better yet, but alive. I did nothing. Grey days make me doubt myself. Not the work, the whole enterprise. Then one yellow hour resets everything. The palette knife I use to scrape and start over, the rags, the smell of linseed in the cold air. Voilà, c'est reparti. I wonder if this is what people who garden feel in April.

I keep a cardboard box by my sewing chair that started out as a scrap basket and has quietly turned into something else. Every button that falls off, every ribbon from a birthday gift, my youngest granddaughter's first lost tooth that the tooth fairy forgot to come get so I kept it, a bit of my mama's old housecoat that's down to about four inches of cloth now. Nothing in there is useful on its own. But it's all I reach for when I'm stuck on a quilt, every single time. I started a new piece this morning and the plan was red and gold, a church window thing I been carrying in my head. Sat down and it just wouldn't come. So I opened that box and pulled out a pale yellow scrap of my grandmother's apron, faded almost white where she'd wiped her hands a thousand times. That's going in the middle of it now and the whole thing turned. You don't plan them moments. You just keep the box close and let it speak when it's ready.